THE WELLBEING PICTURE SCALE (WPS): A PICTURE TOOL TO MEASURE WELLBEING. Sarah Hall Gueldner, DSN, Decker School of Nursing, Binghamton University, PO Box 6000, Binghamton, NY; Yvonne Michel, PhD, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC; Martha Haines Bramlett, PhD, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC; Chin-Fang Liu, PhD(C), The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; Hideko Minegishi, PhD, Kitasato University, Japan; Emiko Endo, PhD, Kitasato University, Japan; Mabel Carlyle, MN, Western Carolina University.

Well-being is recognized as a relative sense of harmony and satisfaction in one’s life (Hills, 1999). WPS was developed to measure general wellbeing in individuals as they traverse their life process. It was designed as an easy-to-administer tool for use with the broadest possible range of adult populations, including persons who have limited formal education, who do not speak English as their first language, who may not be able to see well, or who may be too sick or frail to respond to lengthier or more complex measures. The instrument assesses the energy field in regard to four characteristics: frequency of motion within the human energy field, awareness of one’s self as energy, action emanating from the energy field, and power as energy to achieve harmony within the human-environmental process. Psychometric properties were established through progressive revision and testing in samples totaling more than 2,000 individuals from the United States, Taiwan, and Japan. The overall Chronbach’s alpha is .8795. The four factors were confirmed through Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The instrument is seen as having the potential to give a research voice to persons who otherwise would not be heard.

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